Manufacturer celebrates biggest ever order

A MACHINE making company is celebrating its biggest ever order.

Leeds-based Meltog, which manufactures waste management, filter tube and can-making equipment, has created a biscuit-tin making machine worth more than £1.1m for delivery to Indonesia.

The win follows a doubling of turnover in the last two years and a £250,000 investment in CNC and general machining equipment which has allowed Meltog to make savings of 20% annually on outsourced components. Additionally, staff numbers have grown by a third in the last twelve months including five apprentices.

Meltog managing director Julian Heyworth said: “It is tremendously exciting to have received an order of this scale which is for a machine that will make three-piece decorative cans for butter biscuits. In South Asian culture decorative ‘fancy goods’ are considered to be particularly luxurious and so food items supplied in tins are immensely popular. As such it is an excellent market for growing our packaging division and we are looking forward to doing more business there in the future.

“Our apprentices are an incredibly important part of the business. On the job training is really the only way we can ensure that appropriate manufacturing skills are developed properly because there is a growing shortage of talent in the sector.”

Heyworth led a management buyout of Meltog in 2004 and ten years on, forecasts turnover of £4m for the next year.

The company was founded in 1952, employs 36 people and sells to 103 countries including the UK.